“... victim. The investigators in question are damaged, a common feature of Dexter’s characters. Jack James, the narrator, is almost as screwed up as his brother Ward, the titular ‘paperboy’, star reporter on the Miami Times. Jack self-destructs in his first year at the University of Florida, returning in shame to the narcotic routines of his father’s home ...”

“... crusty, perforated ground All over, fissuring that tired-out waste, Reeking of sulphur. Father William Lang, Franciscan spin doctor to James the Fifth, Let on that he could hear lost souls being racked there, Could tune in to their endless yells and yowls And spot dark demons wildly trampolining, Slewing their sinewy ...”

“... would respect the modestly reformed political and religious hierarchy. This is the backdrop to James Secord’s concise and engaging survey of the popular science literature that transformed the book trade during the 1830s. The era has been viewed as something of a literary hiatus, with Romanticism in decline after Byron and the Victorian serial yet to ...”

“... slippage down the ranks. Muir has countless examples of young men watching their own stock fall. William Jones, curate of the parish of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, got by on £60 a year and considered himself worse off than ‘a bricklayer’s labourer or the turner of a razor grinder’s wheel’; Basil Hall, the son of ...”

“... count as hard evidence, but some of it is persuasive. There was, for instance, an article by one James Harrison in 1884 on this subject, and under the heading ‘Specimen Negroisms’ he included the following: Ef I’d a knowed = if I had known To light out fer = to run for And true enough, these are to be found in Huck’s famous closing statement: ‘if ...”

“... partly because he did so little to promote himself. Before he took over the Dial, he wrote James Joyce a cheque for $700; it came to Joyce from his publisher with a note that read: ‘Please don’t imagine that America is full of rich young men of that kind!’ Thayer wasn’t modest, but he was discreet, especially compared to the most prominent New ...”

“... out of complacency, and more alert to the suffering of others. Molesworth had been taught by William Gaskell, the Unitarian minister and husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, who was another accomplished practitioner of supernatural fiction. Gaskell’s ghost stories, more ambitious and substantial than Molesworth’s (try her unforgettable ‘Old Nurse’s ...”

“... his occasional grudging acceptance of a community of interest. With Anne came the King’s doctor William Butts, ‘whose unobtrusive services to the evangelical cause played a key part in the course of Henrician reformation’. This Boleyn-Butts axis often appears in this book competing vigorously for limelight with Thomas Cromwell. We should not exaggerate ...”

“... Robert Montgomery during Chandler’s lifetime, and afterwards by Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum and James Garner. He was the hero of the most listened to radio detective serial in history, and, by the time Chandler died in 1959, had sold over five million books. The private eye was the wilderness hero moved to the urban frontier, alone and unattached, living ...”

“... Basketball Association, is a trading site for classic moments in basketball matches, like LeBron James dunking. William Shatner sold an X-ray of his teeth. I saw one developer offering NFTs of famous dates. Do you want to own Michael Jackson’s first moonwalk, on 25 March 1983? That’ll currently set you back 0.5 ...”

“... to practising law and medicine. Prominent Lebanese Americans like Ralph Nader, Michael DeBakey, William Peter Blatty, Senator James Abourezk and General John Abizaid rarely visited Lebanon itself. As attached as some were to their grandmothers’ cooking and to bits of folklore, they preferred to keep the country at a ...”

“... the greatest man since the Deluge.’ This assessment of Alexander von Humboldt by King Frederick William IV of Prussia, which Andrea Wulf quotes in her fine new biography, may be a slight exaggeration, but it reflects Humboldt’s extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries. On the centennial of his birth, 14 September 1869, elaborate celebrations were ...”

“... No part of Greek history should come home to us like the third century bc,’ William Tarn wrote in 1913. ‘It is the only period that we can in the least compare with our own.’ And yet the third century – standing midway between the classical age and the coming of Rome, undocumented by any intact surviving source – gets little attention even from specialists, despite the many intriguing figures who helped shape it ...”

“... but some people worried that Germany would lash out in revenge. One morning, on the Isle of Dogs, William Regan heard a small plane fly over and get shot down, causing a surprisingly large explosion. The same thing happened to another plane, and another. ‘I said to Alf that the gunners were on form, three over, three down. Hardly credible. We began to ...”

“... every sign of strain: Someone called Shultz is now in charge at State. The new prince is named William. The odd train Starts up again as if to celebrate, But Aslef thinks a moving train just fosters Flexible notions with regard to rosters. Ray Buckton therefore plans a whole new strike. Meanwhile the members of the SDP Mark ballot slips to name the man ...”